For Artscape, we’re previewing a documentary film that screens on Day One of the festival. It’s called Beneath the Polar Sun, and it has its US premiere tonight (Monday night) at the Misquamicut drive-in theater in Westerly, and will be streaming online for a week after that. Beneath the Polar Sun documents a trip to the “Last Ice Area”, 500 nautical miles from the North Pole, an area wild and uninhabited by humans for nearly a thousand years. A five-person expedition is on a mission to measure the Arctic’s oldest and thickest ice floes, following a route that was navigable just a dozen years ago. None of them was prepared for what they find, and their planned kayak trip becomes a struggle for survival, in an Arctic that has changed dramatically, with implications for the rest of the Earth.  Co-director and Rhode Islander Diana Kushner talked with Morning Edition Host Chuck Hinman about the making of the film.

Morning Edition Host Chuck became part of RIPR in 2012 after a career on commercial radio. He got his broadcasting start as an announcer for Off Track Betting Corporation in NYC. He’s been a news...